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Topic: How to prevent swarming. Do a cut out. (Read 2071 times)

When doing a cut out you completely stress out the hive. You take a course in motion and utterly destroy it.

And in the midst of this type of massacre, you hope to salvage the situation as best you can.

The degree of this is unique to each situation. However common baselines occur with similar jobs.

A house that has an L shape to it has points where the gable roof angles meet. Support beams and trusses all tend to merge at these points and they are structurally important to the well being of the home.

They are also the areas that get neglected in the finishing the most because of the difficulty of being able to access all the nooks and crannies that are created in the framework of the construction.

Those little openings are generally not directly in the attic(which is to hot for bees). They are small gaps with tiny holes to access them. In other words a perfect hive location for bees.

For the person who has to remove them they are a nightmare.

You have to create an opening large enough for human body parts to access the hive without compromising the integrity or getting stung up like a pin cushion.

At these junctions that isn't easy.

But wait you need icing on that cake. You need a homeowner who is on border stages of senility and the other member who refuses to listen to you.

Now you need to figuratively consume enough of the metaphorical cake until you gag. Then you are ready to begin.

The home has Spanish tile and the soffit meets the down angle of the roof at perpendicular angles. And the soffit is stucco which is concrete and wire mesh.

In my effort to locate the bees I usually create small openings and then increase them from there.

My first opening showed some bees but not the amount of comb that should be expected.

So you make a second small hole to a homeowner that is convinced you are trying to turn the house into swiss cheese.

Oh yeah I love cutting stucco and having the dust cover me from head to toe. and watching bees get angrier by the minute. Just so I can make as many useless holes as possible in your house. And then listen to you whine about about how am I going to fix that when I have explained three times I will not and had you sign paperwork saying so.

As I found a portion of the comb in the upper soffit. I discovered queen cells all over the bottom of the comb. This hive was very close to swarming.

So now as I have to save brood I have to save queen cells.

Did I mention the homeowner was a pain in the butt?

So as I make bigger holes and start removing comb and saving queen cells. I see that this hive goes into the point where the roof points meet. I can't cut there. I will have to reach my arm deep inside.

Now it takes time to do all this and I am placing queen cells in the cup holder in my truck. After an hour. I come to put another queen cell in the truck and one of the first ones has hatched. No problem I have a queen cage. Move virgin queen into cage with some workers. All good.

Another hour and I go to the truck to put some more queen cells in the cup holder. And lo and behold another virgin queen has hatched. Okay now I have no more queen cages.

I did have a small water bottle. I made sure it was empty and place the virgin queen in there with some workers. I place window screen over the top and duct tape around it.

The cut out continues. I place some more queen cells in the truck. And another has hatched. Now I am in trouble.

I scurry through my truck and found another water bottle under the seat. Saved!

So now I have three virgin queens and 11 more queen cells.

Now I am at the point where I can't cut the main opening anymore. I reach my arm in and remove as much as I can.

Now I make a big opening in the lower soffit. The bees have moved into there.

I remove the rest of the comb and get the rest of the bees.

Finally I fill the gaps with pink insulation so the bees won't come back. As I am cleaning up at 9pm the homeowner wants me to go into the attic and fill that space with insulation.

Now there are two problems. I have been in the attic. Since the roof angles the is a plywood barrier to the area near where the roof point meets. I found this out on the survey. I cut a small opening with a cordless sawzall when I did the survey. The bees had an opening about the size of a half dollar but no comb because of the heat. Also the space was an angle that was 4 feet high narrowing down to next to nothing and the there was the whole other 1000 sq ft of open attic space.

I said I will not go into the attic and fill it there was no need nor enough insulation. I was asked this four times. The first three times I explained myself nicely. The last time I just said no.

Thats amazing! Love to see the pics of what bees will do all on their own. With the daycare I got along with all th ekids, it was the parents...why are people so dense..oops, I mean difficult?? :-X Those queen cells do look like peanuts! :)Jody

Looks like you did a nice job there Brendhen. Cutting through stucco with wire mesh, not my idea of a spring picnic. You seem to do a lot of these types of jobs, I don't envy you. I am moving slowly today from the one I did yesterday. I left that one at 20 til 9 and it plum wore my butt out. That sounds like a customer you want to forget. Nice pics. You must have felt like the BMOC with all those virgins in your truck. Talk at you later, and again, great job!

Most contractors I know have a fee scale that includes:Labor rate: $35.00 per hour (example only)Working while you watch labor rate: $45.00 per hourWorking while you watch and bleep and moan: $65.00 per hourThe more you watch and bleep and moan the longer it will take, my time is your money. That is stated in the contract or disclaimer sheet and they usually get left alone to do the job in peace.

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Wow I sure would love to have one of those queens. I am picking up a nuks worth of brood and bees from a bee keeper who is taking his bees back home and he is selling off extra frames of brood and bees to cover the brood. Where can I find a queen now to get here before Friday? Dont forget I have tons of drone in the cut out that I did that is here. When I looked at the hive yesterday there was still tons of drones.

Wow I sure would love to have one of those queens. I am picking up a nuks worth of brood and bees from a bee keeper who is taking his bees back home and he is selling off extra frames of brood and bees to cover the brood. Where can I find a queen now to get here before Friday? Dont forget I have tons of drone in the cut out that I did that is here. When I looked at the hive yesterday there was still tons of drones.

Angi

Hey Angi, just a sidenote here. This time of yr there will be tons of drones in just about any hive, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Hey if you don't get the queen on a cut-out, the bees make a queen, well you know those drones will come in handy for those maiden flights. I'm seeing tons myself. Only thing you can do is go back in after one of these cut-outs and do some checks to see how she's laying if at all. Nature is definitely doing its thing this time of the yr.

I am not sure how the queen cells will do I want to keep these here. So I can see if any of them make it. The virgin queens that hatched I will have to see what happens with them. I still have one queenless hive from an earlier cut out.

Sincerely,Brendhan

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